


Gold

by AETXL



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Autumn, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Give Elsa A Girlfriend (Disney), Halloween, Kinda?, Lesbian, Spooky, cryptid, cryptid elsa, elsamaren, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AETXL/pseuds/AETXL
Summary: Honeymaren goes hunting for her family's sustenance, trespasses onto ancestral lands now owned by a mining company. She realizes too late that she's hunting a spirit, not any mere white reindeer.---This is the strangest thing I've ever written. Spooky is not my usual genre or process at all.Teen for language, some non-graphic violence, implied sex
Relationships: Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney), elsamaren - Relationship
Comments: 15
Kudos: 58





	Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Don't expect explanations as to why certain things are happening. I wrote this as chaotically as possible because that's how I understand spooky vibes.
> 
> Loosely based on some Sami myths, as well as a general understanding of contemporary life situations facing folks in the far north of Scandinavia. If you like reading a bunch of dry, non-fiction sources, let me know.
> 
> Teen for language, some non-graphic violence, implied sex  
> \---

Autumn is beautiful.

Autumn is hard.

Winter comes shortly, with the promise of less land to migrate reindeer across. Less land to live off of. Less land as mines move in.

And, always, more taxes.

Her family is part of a _siiddat,_ which means her little brother has a registration with the government, even though she—and all the women of the families they herd reindeer with—is actually in charge of their herd’s migration. Despite her having a ‘real’ job at a sorry bar in town (an hour from home). And hunting for her family’s sustenance.

_Which_ , she thinks bitterly, _is why so few of us herd reindeer anymore._ _Not that we’d have to if their people hadn’t hunted this land’s animals near to extinction to begin with…_

She only cares about _her_ family, now. Ryder's kids are hungry. They can’t afford to slaughter more reindeer this season for food, or they’ll be bankrupt by the next season. Their people have rules for a reason: Sustainability. This government defended these lands from foreign mining companies, but now that it’s a ‘local’ company coming to destroy the forests and rivers and bays and taiga and tundra, they’re fucked.

_Calm down, Mare,_ she tells herself, glancing back at the chain-link fences she jumped. _You’ll just get hotheaded… Focus on your breath…_

_In, out. In, out. Wind change, move south… In, out. In… Out…_

Honeymaren’s further out than she normally goes to hunt. Mist hangs over the land the nearer she gets to the river, the nearer she gets to the lake, then the sea. It always does around here, always did long before the fences and signs. Which is why she hates hunting here. It isn’t safe: More than once she’s heard of men coming from down south, shooting their guns at locals like herself. What’s more irksome, however, is that the mist gives her an unfair advantage over her prey.

Then again, she can only give this moose so much credit. She’d rather face a bear than the average moose, and she would rather _not_ face a bear. Yet this particular moose she’s tracked for an entire day is so old and sickly. If humans hadn’t hunted wolves to the brink of extinction, it surely would have been felled years ago. A part of her hopes that her prey falls on its own, from exhaustion, instead of her arrows. In a way, she knows that she would rather die among the brightly colored leaves instead of murdered by a weapon. So, Honeymaren stays far enough away that the creature doesn’t have to see her, doesn’t have to put up a fight against her—which a moose definitely could.

\---

Stories come back to Honeymaren when she hunts, stories of Meandash:

_The first man, the first reindeer, the first hunter. He brought the bow and arrow to humanity so that we may not go hungry. He taught us not to fell the leader of the herd, which would bring death to all, but rather hunt the ill, the old, the females without calves. Take care of the herd, slaughter only when necessary. Do not waste a lost life—use every piece of the creature from sinew and marrow to each individual hair and antler. For the reindeer's blood became the rivers, his stomach became the oceans, his flesh became the land, his liver became the mysterious, mythical river, Ahtohallen… And when he married a human woman, he taught their children to keep their distance, for the scent of humans cannot be trusted…_

\---

Ryder’s children need to eat. Plus, she’s got to get money to help the whole _siiddat_ pay their taxes. That her people have followed their ways, have adapted the prejudices and religions of colonizers, that she cannot trust them with _who she is_ —none of that matters compared with the need of children for food and the need of adults for tax money.

Following the trail from half a kilometer back at most, Honeymaren notices the tracks. The moose trips more, based on drag marks in the tough ground. There are scratches here and there, cut by the moose’s antlers dipping with fatigue. He falters through the sparse trees, the grasses. She breathes deep through her nose, removes her large hunting bow from her back, grinds her teeth to keep herself from grunting loudly when she strings the bow.

In that moment that Honeymaren pulls the tension of her big-game hunting bow, something out of sight shimmers, refracts light from the dipping sun into her eyes. At first, she winces away. The glittering light persists though. Looking up and shielding her brow with a gloved hand, Honeymaren peers carefully through the mist and the way light shimmers through it. Wind picks up, blowing through her and also clearing some of the fog away. Directly in front of her—albeit at a great distance across the taiga—a great white reindeer, without blemish, blazes in the sunlight. She gasps. Brown eyes go wide at the sight.

Her mind wars within her.

_Don’t._

_A white reindeer. They are so, so rare!_

_The moose you’ve hunted for days is so close!_

_White reindeer are priceless. Your family would be kept well for over a year. You’d have white-fur boots for everyone. Ryder could leave his retail job, at least for a little while. He could study full time as a_ noaidi _._

_Your family needs food now!_ _Not money!_

_Taxes paid and debt paid off!_

Hunting an already dying moose is a very different sport from hunting a reindeer. Even from this far away, Honeymaren can tell it’s a healthy, strapping specimen if ever she saw one. Especially for a wild one… There’s no way this reindeer belongs to someone’s domestic herd. And yet, a wild reindeer, all white without blemish?

_The sun-god…_

“Shut up,” Honeymaren tells herself. She looks down her earlier path, following after the moose, sunlight dappled through conifers and red shrubs. Sighing, she hopes other creatures—wolverines, bobcats, bears, scavengers—won’t get to it first, even though she knows her decision means that they will. Taking an arrow from the quiver at her hip, Honeymaren does something bizarre even to herself by driving the arrow deep into the bark of the nearest tree. Something about the act feels like a lifeline. But it also feels like an affront, an unnecessary harm to the birch tree beside her. Breathing deep, she lets her hand fall against its bark, practically caressing the tree in apology. Her stomach churns, but her heart is reassured at having left some sign that she came this way.

Because she’s not supposed to be here at all.

And with that, she runs for the reindeer.

\---

Too close.

Honeymaren knows she’s too close and too antsy. She swallows thickly, afraid. _Why?! You need food!_

_If this was about food, you would have kept after the moose._

Yet she knows that she’s too close to this reindeer for things to be okay. It should have run off in a new direction long before she could see it so nearby. All it does is trot about, with no signs of other reindeer around. On her elbows and thighs, Honeymaren flattens herself against the ground, crawling toward the white reindeer. Grasses are sparser here, but a fair number of small trees around do help hide her. Certainly, there’s enough lichen around to keep many reindeer happy, were they allowed on this land.

That is how she knows this land now officially belongs to the mining company, and she’s trespassing. It wasn’t her initial intent, but she wasn’t giving up on that moose because of a fence. She isn’t like those people who hunt for sport—lives depend on her.

 _And yet here you are,_ she chastises herself. _Crawling after smaller, more challenging prey._

A rocky hill stands between Honeymaren and her extremely rare and valuable prey. Carefully, she backs up the ledge so as to make less noise, to watch her feet so she doesn’t accidentally dislodge a stone and send off some warning bell to this lone, white reindeer. Sensing the apex of the ledge, Honeymaren holds her breath. Ever so slowly, she turns her head and peeks over the rock, at a tiny copse of birch trees. Pushing her pupils to the edges of her vision, she barely sees the all-white reindeer, mere meters away.

Exactly as it turns to glare right back at her with sky blue eyes.

Something cold.

Honeymaren scrunches her nose, refocuses her eyes in front of her.

_Is it snowing?_

She brushes the tips of her fingers over her nose, spots moisture. Despite being autumn, despite being the far north, it’s still, so _early_ for snow. Honeymaren glances up at the heavens, can’t see much because mist curses this area of the boreal forest all year long. Yet, above her, Honeymaren does in fact see snowflakes falling.

All of a sudden, snow-choked winds swirl all around Honeymaren. A blizzard, out of nowhere, attacks.

Gasping with pain at the deep chill, at the surprising strike of snow and ice, Honeymaren braces herself against the land. “Aaahhh!” she shouts, wrapping her arms around herself at the shock, but any voice of hers is dragged off on the wind. Gritting her teeth against the gale, Honeymaren turns and peers back over the ledge, seeking the reindeer.

It still stands there, unmoved. Staring right back at her!

_Are those horns… gold?_

Then the reindeer runs—Honeymaren gives chase, desperate. She is so close, she was so close! And she ignores the hour, the dipping sun, the loss of warmth, the forgotten supplies where she left the moose tracks.

\---

_I wasn’t prepared_.

Honeymaren knew the season, knew the ways to prepare, packed appropriately. But she also knew that once in a while, winter storms could come in without warning, and she did _not_ prepare properly for that ahead of this hunt. Because she left her bulkiest supplies where she left the moose’s trail, thinking she could return to her arrow, make camp. Because of her hubris, imagining that she could hunt down this reindeer on her own in so little time before nightfall.

She only managed to track the white reindeer through the snow for an hour, tops. With every step, the biting wind and ice only intensifies. At this point, Honeymaren can’t tell which way is north or south, east or west. All she wants is to find her arrow.

Her compass is covered in unbreakable ice. That she learned by smashing the goddamned thing against a boulder. The ice did not shatter. Underneath that deep layer of ice, the compass itself might be broken.

In short, she’s desperate. Deep in the grips of a blizzard, what option does she have but to keep moving? Stay warm? All she wants is to backtrack, find her pack, maybe get to the moose if she’s lucky enough to live that long.

The problem is, as Honeymaren shivers step after step, she keeps imagining things. Or hallucinating them.

A white reindeer with gold horns is _impossible_ , except in old stories…

Among the things she _surely_ imagines, Honeymaren spots human footprints. Not shoe-prints, bare footprints in the snow. Flecks of gold. Human hair, white as the deep snow she marches through, but human hair nonetheless. She knows there cannot be another human out here. Mainly because no one else among her people could possibly have been so foolish. Or knows that she's here. If she survives this hunt, she’ll never hear the end of it from the elders.

Honeymaren winces against the freezing wind as she follows the tracks. Whether she sees human or reindeer footprints doesn’t matter. She keeps moving to stay alive. Meandash, as great a mythical creature he was, did not spare lives. Nor did the sun-reindeer-god that represents the whole universe or however it goes. Step after step, she finds herself in deeper and deeper snow.

_You’re not going to make it very long…_

_Stop, Mare, shut up!_ Something inside Honeymaren assures her that if she turns around, she’ll be back at the moose’s trail. She’ll save herself, even if it’s too late to save her family. With ice on her eyelashes, her lips chapped painfully, frostbite taking over her fingers despite her thick gloves, Honeymaren turns around. She could head back.

Except… she’s already done this before. How many times has she turned around in the blizzard? However, something's different this time. As thick as the snow falls around her, Honeymaren is an experienced hunter. And despite next to no visibility, Honeymaren can see something distinctly.

Reindeer tracks.

Behind her.

Her bottom lip trembles, not from the cold. From the fear.

Because the golden-horned reindeer… It’s…

Somehow, the creature circled round…

The reindeer is hunting her.

_You fucking fool. Run!_

\---

Honeymaren knows her shit. No matter the snow, the ice, the wind, she will always know the sound of the sea. Where the sea is, she can find limestone. Finding limestone means finding caves, and finding caves means finding shelter.

On her hands and knees, Honeymaren crawls into a sea-side ‘cave’ no more than twenty meters deep. That’s more than enough, even with a hunter hot on her trail. She’s lost track of time, lost track of how long she’s been exposed to impossible cold. Without a doubt, this storm cannot be natural—it’s too cold, too sudden, too long-lasting for the season, even here.

As she breathes deep but fast, Honeymaren knows already that the reindeer pursuing her has caused this wintry spell. It means to kill her. And, she muses, as her breathing slows and her own body heat slowly warms the tiny cave, it will succeed. So… now what?

_You can’t fight this thing_ , she thinks. The howling wind outside, the blasting snow, it’s surely killed many animals already. Honeymaren has no desire to keep up this fight if it will cost the lives of so many living beings. Not for no use. If no fox survives, no wolverine survives, no moose survives, no human survives this terrible storm? What’s the point in that? Anger pricks at her. It’s not fair to punish so many for her hunt. She, Honeymaren, pursued the reindeer with golden horns. So she, Honeymaren, is willing to pay for whatever sin she committed, so long as other creatures get to live.

Though she will nonetheless fight for her right to live. She will die a good death.

Only inches from her feet, the storm rages. Pulling herself further into the hallow of limestone—the sound of crashing sea waves not far—Honeymaren pulls some items from her pockets. With them, she starts the tiniest fire beside her. She positions herself on her back, leaning back from the entrance, places an arrow upon her bow, which she points toward the entrance as well. The fire won’t last long. Still, Honeymaren wants merely to feel a hint of heat again before she fights and perishes, a hint of the heat she feels for her loved ones, the heat she hopes to give them in return for every sacrifice she’s made throughout her young life.

Breathing deep, Honeymaren falls asleep bit by bit, deliberately ignoring the glint of gold outside her cave.

\---

_Moonlight so shear against naked snow, she can see for miles. Lights dance and crackle in a sky she’s never seen before. Walking among goahtis. Purple flame, perfectly safe, lighting trees and shrubs that are not consumed by the fire, scampering through the camp. A horse of water—a nokk worthy of trust, what an absolute enigma. Walking mountains. And the purest love she’s ever known…_

\---

Honeymaren gasps loudly, shooting up and clutching at her chest. After a few desperate breaths, her eyes flash around her. She’s in a bright room of… ice? A goahti of ice? The ice is the shape of a traditional goahti house. And the ice is so thick that Honeymaren can’t see beyond the translucent walls around her, light filtering through them. Furs line the floor, leaving space for a firepit near the center of the room with purple flames. Yet goahtis… they typically only have one main room. This space has doors in its walls.

_Where am I?_ Honeymaren ponders, her hands clinging to the fur blanket around her. Only then does she look down at herself, clearly in a bed, covered in furs and blankets of all kinds. When her feet kick in surprise, she feels a strange shape, reaches under the blankets, finds a warm water ‘bottle’—one of the traditional variety made from the bladder of an animal. Despite her initial shivers of disgust, Honeymaren returns the ‘bottle’ to where she found it. She takes stock of herself. Her base layers are still on, even her boots and her fur-lined hat.

No bow or arrows, no hunting knives… no tools whatsoever.

Maybe she’s been transported to some place, some time, past. However, no immediate answer presents itself, and after everything else, Honeymaren does not yet feel brave enough to leave this bed, considering she should be dead.

_I should be dead…_

“Why aren’t I dead?” Honeymaren muses aloud. “Wait, am I dead?”

A sudden tempest sounds outside the house, so loud that Honeymaren’s hands rush to her ears, braces against the vicious pressure of the sound waves. Yet, as quickly as the painful sounds arrived, they dissipate. When she blinks away the shock of the sound, Honeymaren looks up. She’s not alone.

_If you’re not dead yet, you are_ totally _going to be, Mare._

Before her stands a woman of sorts—of beautiful, terrifying sorts. Impossibly pale in an elegant, white dress. Sky blue eyes pierce her like ice. And although beautiful women have always frightened Honeymaren and left her tongue-tied, her most striking feature certainly ups the ante. Broad, sharp, golden antlers rise like a tree’s branches from her skull, impossibly huge, their roots buried among elegantly tousled hair of platinum blonde.

She does not look happy.

_So so dead, Mare._

It occurs to her that perhaps this creature kept her alive, just to kill her while conscious. But the woman hasn’t spoken yet, only glowered at Honeymaren, hiding under the blankets. Steeling herself, she takes a breath, and finds herself speaking in unison with the woman.

“Who are you?”

They both flinch at the shared words. Although the horned woman’s nostrils flare with annoyance, Honeymaren asks another question. “Where am I?”

“Who are you,” the woman demands, reiterating her glare.

Best to answer first. A thought blips across Honeymaren’s consciousness—don’t give your real name to a forest spirit, especially an ice witch that might actually be the reindeer-sun-god. “I’m… I’m uh,” Honeymaren stutters. “I’m Hunter.”

The disbelief is palpable. “Hunter,” the woman repeats, unimpressed.

“Yes,” Honeymaren says, surer of herself this time. She meets the woman’s eyes and holds the contact with fierce determination. They both know she’s lying; the strange woman can accept the non-answer or she can… do god-only-knows to Honeymaren for lying.

“That’s the best you could come up with, Hunter?” she asks rhetorically.

 _Thank goodness,_ Honeymaren thinks, releases a breath she’d been holding. “I’m not in the habit of waking up to strange places and strange… ers.”

“You tried to _hunt_ me,” the woman snarls.

If she didn’t know better, Honeymaren thinks she spots some sharper than average canines among her teeth. Reindeer don’t have canines, much less sharp ones. “Where am I?”

“How dare you,” the woman continues, ignoring the question. “When I gave you a moose to hunt? You humans are never satisfied.”

 _Wait, she’s not a reindeer_ , Honeymaren reminds herself. It’s hard not to look at the horns though. “Where am I?”

“So foolish,” she growls.

“And then you hunted me,” Honeymaren replies, getting frustrated already. “Presumably I’m some kind of dead, so there. We’re even. Now…” She swings her legs out from under the covers and stands to face the woman. “Where am I? And who are you?” _Besides my worst nightmare,_ she thinks, swallowing thickly as her heart races. The piercing blue eyes shimmer with hatred.

“You tell me you’re ‘Hunter,’ and you expect me to give you _my_ name?”

“No!” Honeymaren retorts, fists on her hips, rolling her eyes. She always was too spitfire for her own good. “Just something to call you!”

Her eyes narrow down at Honeymaren. “What makes you think you’ll live long enough to use any such name?”

She blinks rapidly, quietly asks, “So I am alive?”

A troubling sneer responds. “For now.”

“Why keep me alive at all?” Honeymaren asks, unable to hide the shiver of fear in her words. Although she doesn’t feel cold, she notices a thin vapor escaping her lips. The stranger’s eyes also lock on the exhale, watching it rise and dissipate with rapt attention. When her eyes lower to Honeymaren’s again, her sneer is gone, face blank. A slow smirk arrives in its place.

Only now does it occur to Honeymaren that she is truly the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen. And although her smirk reads teasing but so kind, Honeymaren trembles.

“Someone is afraid,” the stranger whispers.

 _What?_ Honeymaren’s brow furrows. She takes a step back, shaking her head slightly in confusion.

The woman keens, “And you should be.”

Her stomach drops. Again and much thicker this time, Honeymaren’s breath is visible in the air.

“You’re my prey now, Hunter.” With a snap of her fingers, the sunlight that permeated the room goes out. Thin pillars of purple flame rise beside the many doors, and Honeymaren can only see her captor by their glow reflected by her golden antlers.

 _Run!_ Honeymaren bolts, grabs a burning piece of wood from the firepit at the center of the room, dashes through one of the black doorways.

\---

It’s a maze.

A dark maze of black ice. And although it isn’t cold in the depths of this ice prison, Honeymaren’s breath glows gold, revealing her location. So does the torch of course, but the purple flame doesn’t glow half as bright as her breath. She finds herself running across thin bridges, slipping dangerously down slopes, climbing up slick walls, hiding behind dark formations… only to be found with a triumphant shout, making her duck out of the way as a blow demolishes wherever she’d just been.

Of the ways Honeymaren thought she might perish, being chased through a dangerous labyrinth by a freaky reindeer spirit lady until she breathes her last is definitely the least expected.

The exertion of escape makes her breath harder, makes her breath glow brighter. Abandoning yet another hiding place, she dashes away from the woman with gold antlers. Black ice reflects her torch strangely, and she gasps—a cliff! At the last second, she leaps, clawing at the air as she floats across the chasm. With a brutal groan, she lands on the other side, at least from the waist up. Her feet dangle, scrabble up the rest of the way despite having the wind knocked out of her. Rolling over onto her back, Honeymaren realizes she dropped her torch mid-leap.

_Not that I had much torch left,_ she thinks. Tapping the back of her head against the ground a couple times, she rolls onto her stomach, pushes up. _Can’t stop, Mare._ Honeymaren pushes off at a controlled sprint. After several minutes at her pace, however, nothing happens. The ground remains flat, no attack materializes. Cautious nonetheless, she keeps up a jog.

By the time Honeymaren thinks she must have run a couple miles across blank, black nothingness, she finally slows to a walk, then a stop. She sees… nothing. Even her glowing breath fades despite still breathing heavily. Her only source of light…

 _What did she say?_ Honeymaren wonders, the first moment she’s had to think in the last few hours. _Something about being afraid._ Remembering what the spirit had done before, Honeymaren lifts her hand and snaps her fingers. Nothing happens. Quietly, she huffs, unsurprised. She inhales deeply, holding it, accepts that the dark will swallow her up, that the spirit will find her and kill her eventually, and exhales.

Then, Honeymaren sees a spot, small, purplish. At first, Honeymaren thinks it’s a spot in her vision, her eyes adjusting to the dark. But the light grows bigger. No, it gets closer, flickering. After what seems forever, the purple fire approaches within a couple meters of her. She blinks rapidly, wrapping her mind around this latest, strangest thing. It’s a fire, the size of a typical fire pit, just floating atop a black reflective surface (likely ice). Then the fire starts retreating.

“Wait!” Honeymaren hisses, runs after the light, letting it lead her. Together they walk through the dark.

\---

"This is boring," she grumbles, walking alongside the mysterious flame. Somewhere in her mind, a grade school lesson on wars comes back to Honeymaren, and she remembers that prisoners of war complained about boredom as often as they did torture. _Really great comparison, Mare, very promising situation._ Then the flame stops, and she does the same. She watches it then scurry forward quickly, pause. "What, did I insult you?" she asks it, about to take another step. "What are you—YIPE!"

The flame swiftly rises through the air, then disappears from her sight.

"Nooo, no, no, no," Honeymaren whimpers. "Please no." Nothing happens immediately, and she crosses her arms over her chest, trying to hug herself.

A rocky sound is her only warning before the floor beneath her feet shoots up with such speed, she's knocked to her knees, yelping in pain. When the movement stops, her body keeps going, lands on more black ice. Groaning in pain, she turns her face to glare at the purple flame that awaits her.

"Couldn't warn me about the weird rock elevator, hm?" Gradually she gets back to her feet and follows the fire forward.

Light ebbs into the room Honeymaren’s led to, despite being made of— “Aaaaand more ice,” she announces to herself and the floating fire. Gesturing grandly—sarcastically—Honeymaren announces to her strange guide, “A whole dome of ice! Thank you for all the ice ever. And the bruises.” She grins down at the purple flames, senses that somehow it perceives her. It must or how would it have found her and brought her here? “So is this when you show me a coliseum or something and burn me at the stake?”

Of course, she receives no response.

Not right away.

Suddenly, the flame grows, spills across the floor as if gasoline had been suddenly poured out everywhere.

Honeymaren screams, jumps away—but the flame doesn’t burn her. Eyes wide and teeth chattering, she gulps. Though purple fire, certainly warm, forms a field around her, nothing burns. She even lowers her bare hands into it, and her flesh stays intact. Looking round, she realizes that the expansive room alights. Black ice doesn’t melt. Then, Honeymaren’s eyes adjust. And she screams.

The domed walls are covered in human skulls and bones.

“WHAT THE FUCK!?” Honeymaren screams, doesn’t care if the spirit hears her or not. “WHAT THE FUCK WHAT IN GOD’S NAME—” And so on.

Once she’s hoarse, taking deep panicked breaths, Honeymaren groans to herself, “This is hell!”

_Wait!_ A thought—no, a sense, a feeling—rises within her. She notices that her breath still doesn’t glow. Why isn't she scared? Lowering her brow, determined, Honeymaren walks through field of fire around her, edging closer to a wall. Cautious, she settles her eyes on one skull. One, she can handle just one. Swallowing her horror, she really looks at it. Something’s odd, and not merely because the room’s light flickers. The skulls aren’t simply stacked, each one has a bundle of bones with it, as well as items. Sewing needles, hunting bows, drums, even gáktis, the traditional garb of her people. “Okay,” she whispers to herself. “Okay, okay, okay…” Inch by inch, she reaches her hand out toward the remains, fighting her every urge to run and puke.

Her fingers stop short. Honeymaren blinks in surprise.

She’s not touching any skull or bone or remains because her hand slides down ice, sheer and flat.

It’s some kind of image, like a projection. Bones are not themselves stacked here. This is no mass grave. That, or it is and they’re covered in a thin, transparent layer of ice, but none of the ice Honeymaren’s interacted with in this strange horrible place has been transparent.

“What the fuck?”

Fingers snap.

Sunlight fills the room, the flames disappear, Honeymaren spins on her heel. Across the vast domed chamber stands the spirit. She looks shocked to see Honeymaren, speechless in fact.

“Is this _saivo?”_ Honeymaren shouts, gesturing to the room, meaning… everything. The woman with golden antlers marches toward her, but Honeymaren stands her ground, prickling. “Am I in some land of the dead? Alas, I heard _saivo_ was much more pleasant, I’d hate to think it’s under poor management!”

“What are you doing here?!” the spirit woman demands. As she closes in, Honeymaren sees the shock hidden behind the anger in her eyes. _“How_ are you in here?!”

Honeymaren marches to meet her, and the woman pulls back, hesitant. “Is this _saivo_ or not?!”

“It isn’t!” The spirit woman looks shocked at herself when she answers. Their eyes meet. Holding the contact for a moment, Honeymaren recalls something an elder told her once, that a reindeer’s soul resides in its ears—the most expressive part of their body, after all.

_You are not looking at a reindeer, Mare,_ she reminds herself. And yet, unsure of why she does it, Honeymaren slowly reaches both hands forward. At first the woman flinches, fidgets, but as soon as she touches the spirit, she settles. Honeymaren’s thumbs rest in front of each of the woman’s ears, her palms perfectly fitting at the juncture of her jaw and neck—she can feel the woman’s pulse—and her fingers spread back into her blonde hair. _So she has a heart._

Gasping, blue eyes wide, the spirit freezes in Honeymaren’s grasp. She whispers, “What have you done to me, Hunter?”

_What_ have _you done, Mare?_ she wonders. Despite everything leading up to this point, Honeymaren decides she best be kind to whatever kind of creature this is. Very sharp antlers are still nearby after all.

“This isn’t _saivo?”_

She shakes her head, looks afraid.

More gently, Honeymaren asks, “So where are we?”

“Athohallen.”

“Wow!” Honeymaren responds, fighting to keep her eyes on the spirit. “Okay. Why are there so many bones here?”

“Spirits go to _saivo_ ,” she whispers back, trembling. “I guard the bones. None of them are actually here, I merely watch over them from here. They're each in their graves.”

Nodding, licking her lips, Honeymaren decides to keep going. “So… these are my people? My ancestors?”

“Your people?” she asks back. “You’re one of the people of the sun?”

“Yes,” Honeymaren responds, smiling ever so slightly. “You look surprised.”

Swallowing, she says, “I used to know one of my humans from sight alone, could sense them all from here.”

“Things have changed, I take it?”

Although her pale hands grasp Honeymaren’s wrists as if to force her hands off, she doesn’t. Or she can’t. In either case, a bitter pout crosses her face. “So much has changed, so little care for my forest, for my people and their bones!”

“I’m sorry,” Honeymaren says with every drop of compassion she can muster. “Truly.” As the spirit appears to think over these words, tears rise to her eyes, her breathing hastens. Honeymaren reacts rather than thinks, rubs the pads of her thumbs over her ears. She gasps at the touch, and Honeymaren swears she’s never seen such vulnerable eyes. “Are… Are you all right?” _You ask the creature that tried to kill you multiple times_ , she reminds herself, but the compassion’s become real.

Silence. Only sad eyes.

“I’ll let you go,” she assures the spirit. “I’m sorry if I—”

“No, stay!”

They both stare at each other, equally dumbfounded. Shutting her surprised mouth, Honeymaren asks, “Who are you?”

Of course, there’s a pause. Although her face barely changes, a hundred thoughts seem to cross the spirit’s mind. At last, the tiniest smirk meets Honeymaren’s eyes. “I asked you first.”

“Promise you won’t kill me?” Honeymaren asks. The spirit solemnly nods, finally breaking the minutes-long eye contact. When her gaze returns, it is again cool and yet, it’s friendly. “My name is Honeymaren.”

“Honeymaren…” she says, visibly softening. She smiles, leans into the palm of Honeymaren’s hand. “You are one of my people.”

“Suppose it isn’t a common name,” she admits.

“You should have told me at the start,” the spirit challenges, leaning into Honeymaren’s other palm. And getting closer somehow. Her hands wrap round Honeymaren’s wrists again, but instead of grabbing, she’s… caressing.

“You shouldn’t have tried to kill me in a blizzard.”

“You should have accepted that moose I sent your way.”

“I should have, you're right,” Honeymaren admits with a sheepish grin. A deep chuckle echoes from the spirit’s chest, seductive. Shocked to feel her skin and guts prickle with desire, Honeymaren asks, “And your name?”

Pressing still closer despite Honeymaren striving to keep them arm-length apart, she responds, “I knew another Honeymaren once.” One pale hand reaches out to her face, cards through her hair, loosing her dark brown hair from its braid.

_What in the fuck!_ Honeymaren thinks, suddenly way too warm.

A sudden tempest, intense sound and pressure, Honeymaren screws her eyes shut and yanks her hands inward, covering her own ears. Almost immediately, though, it’s over. She opens her eyes, finds herself back in the goahti of ice from before, only now there are no doors. No, there's one door, held open by a rock. Through the opening, Honeymaren spies her arrow, lodged in a birch tree. Fire dances in the center of the room, a plain orange and yellow. Before her stands the woman, but she’s different—she doesn’t tower over Honeymaren (as much), her golden antlers shrink before her eyes to a size far less threatening. The spirit nearly looks human. And she's too close.

So gently, the spirit woman cradles Honeymaren’s face in her hands, mirroring what she had done. Looking into her blue eyes, the face of a lover she can’t remember gazes back at Honeymaren. Pressing closer and closer, until Honeymaren feels the back of her calves bump against the bed she awoke in.

_Oh! … Oh._ _Okay, Mare, this is happening. Not complaining, but unexpected!  
_

The woman hums, smiles with self-satisfaction. “You may call me Elsa, Honey.”

**Author's Note:**

> \---  
> I have no idea if that was actually scary, but I do hope it was at least a little funny.


End file.
